4 Products That Only Exist in Movies

Movies ask a lot of us. They want us to believe that the same cop can be in the wrong place at the wrong time every day for his entire career, they want us to believe vampires roam among us and they want us to believe that children are cute and precocious (instead of miserable, shrieking poop harvesters). Suspension of disbelief is part of the contract you sign with a movie when you buy your ticket. And for the most part, I have no problem doing that. Sometimes, however, some totally absurd and unrealistic events just pull me out of the fantasy world and ruin the experience. And I'm not talking about the impossible fantastical stuff that is common in a science fiction or superhero flick. I will believe that getting bitten by a spider gives you super powers in a movie (and, indeed, life). I can accept a character doing or saying something that's specific to their fictional universe. It's when the characters do or say something that's specific to being actors in a movie that gets to me. Whenever someone makes an unreasonable decision simply because they're in front of a camera pretending to be a human, I call "bullshit," usually out loud, usually in a theater.

Well, I'm sick of it. That's why I've designed a series of products to apply to the real world. If we had these products, movies would finally make sense. You're welcome, movies.

His n' Hers L-Shaped Bed Sheets

What it is:

How many times have you seen this:

If you answered every movie, that's not exactly a proper answer for the way my question was phrased, but I still understand your point. A couple has sex and even though they've (presumably) both seen each other incredibly naked, the woman still decides to cover up her boobs, while the man proudly displays his chest to the world. For any 14-year-old boy who is desperate to catch the slightest of boob glances (that is to say, every 14-year-old boy), it is the single most frustrating thing to happen to cinema.

Why it Happens:

In accordance with the MPAA's archaic and nonsensical rating system, only a small percentage of any given R-rated movie is allowed to be titties, (and that percentage shrinks as the rating lowers). An extra eight frames of boob turns your movie from a PG-13 to an R, and an R to an NC-17, (thus limiting your chances of reaching a wider audience). Now, it's important to note that the MPAA isn't against the idea of sex, they just specifically don't want to see anyone's breasts or genitals. So to cover their asses, boobically speaking, filmmakers try to convince their actors and audience that this...

... is a totally reasonable and comfortable way to behave after sex. This odd, L-shaped sheet arrangement, has become accepted among movie makers as a thing that humans actually do, even though no one I know has ever admitted to doing this or even considered doing it. Additionally, it's pretty uncomfortable and freaking difficult to arrange bed sheets so that they only go up to the guy's waist but all the way up to the chick's armpits. Movies want you to ignore all that and pretend, for just a second, that this is a thing that people like you do all the time.

Well I don't accept the idea that couples awkwardly manipulate their bed sheets to preserve an at-that-point un-preservable level of modesty, so I've decided to create my own, naturally-L-shaped sheets for the couple that loves, at any given time, only two out of four of their collective nipples.

The Pitch:

You're in bed with an amazing woman with whom you've just had tremendous, beautiful-people-sex. All is going well until you realize that, post-coitus, you'll still have to share a bed in your combined nudity. It's too warm to go completely under the covers, but that doesn't mean you should have to stare at her disgusting, perfectly sculpted breasts while you're trying to sleep, right? His n' Hers has the answer.

The "Whatever You Have On You" Taxi Service

What it is:

Literally any movie that has ever included a ride and a taxi has done this: our protagonist is desperately behind schedule, so he hops a cab, speeds off to his destination at the last minute and pays by throwing a wad of sweaty bills at the cabbie, sometimes yelling "Keep the change!" or "The girl I love is about to marry the wrong guy!" or "There's no time, there's a bomb in the president!"

Oh-Bomb-a would have made so much more sense.

Why it Happens:

Filmmakers are very selective about where exactly reality will show up in their movies. Some pay more attention to detail than others, but none of them want to waste a second watching someone actually pay for a cab. Usually, your hero is either on their way to a romantic rendezvous or a badass action showdown and, in either case, you don't want to slow that pacing by showing your Johns of both the McClane and Cusack variety fumbling around with their credit card or searching for the correct amount of bills. And I get that. Watching our hero pay would be boring and it would kill the momentum of a tense moment, but I guess my question is Why show it at all? Enough movies have used the trick so it's beyond stale at this point, and it's not like throwing a fist-full of cash is an exciting visual. You're the director, you have the power to cut right from the taxi to the next scene. Why perpetuate this bullshit? As a child, I thought cabdrivers were animals that ate sweaty wads of green paper and, as long as you quickly yet absentmindedly fed them when you left, they'd take you anywhere.

(I didn't have parents growing up.)

The Pitch:

Where are you going? You know what? Save it. We go there. The center of the city in the middle of a disaster? A vague destination like "the tunnel?" An airport in rush hour? A Chinese casino in Rush Hour? We go to all of those places. And if you're trying to get to the bank but you want us to take a bunch of one-way streets and drive through public parks because you're a cop and you think that makes us legally obligated to do what you say, we do that, too! And when you reach your destination or when you realize you don't care about your destination and you just want us to "Stop right here," just toss whatever assortment of bills you can fit into your palms. Sometimes it'll only be about three dollars, and sometimes it'll be several hundred. That is the risk you take for what is essentially the low-end prostitutes of the Taxi World. Yeah. We do the weird stuff.